Standing Witness
by Thanfiction
Summary: What is a friend but a single soul in two bodies?" - Aristotle...Part of the DAYDverse, spoilers for the first novel, specifically chapter 18.
1. Chapter 1

There was a layer of waxy furniture polish on the heavy oak dining table, and his fingernails dug so deep as he gripped the edge that they creased and bunched it like curls of dead skin beneath his hands. Grease congealed to white lumps beneath the wrinkled clumps of egg on the untouched platters, and he could see his own face; colorless, nightmare distorted on the curve of his plate, the bowl of his spoon, the thin metal slat of his knife. Someone had tipped over their tea. It ran like black blood along the center of the table, splitting and reforming around the dishes. His eyes saw it, recorded it, were keenly aware of every detail, but Terry's mind was gone.

He couldn't bring himself to lift his eyes from the table, because he could hear the screams, incoherent and raw, the clatter of teeth that sometimes squished on the flesh of a tongue, the rattle of chains like icicles in a bitter gale, the whirring of the thing and the voice that muttered in Polish things that all his languages were unneeded to know were calculating and incapable of seeing humanity where they spilled their curses. He didn't need to see it, because he knew that would be the line where his own sanity split off to spiral into the abyss, and he needed it.

It was all he could do, nothing at all, really, but he didn't need to look, didn't need to hear the sounds that battered in the dull pounding of a storm-tossed ocean's white noise against his ears. He was in his seat, but he was on the platform, his mind open, the fingers of his thoughts laced through those of his friend for every moment of their ordeal. Mike had tried to keep him out at first, but then the walls had been broken, and he had reached through the shards to catch and anchor.

The alphabet, backwards and forwards, alternating languages for each letter. Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration. The prelude to the Statute of Secrecy. Lists. Formulae, poetry, first prompted, now flagging, stuttering, pulled along one line at a time as the cords of thought stretched thinner and weaker between them, though the words still cried louder than the screams the others heard.

He would close his eyes, but like looking, that would be too much, especially now. Golden sequins of butter clotted on the fried apples, their plump flesh withering near the peels that shone like patent leather with cinnamon sugar syrup. Crystals of salt individually perfect cubes clinging around the holes of the shaker. He had to hang on.

_Oh ! mes amis ! - Mon coeur, c'est sûr, ils sont des frères…come on, Mike, you know it, please…_

_Noirs inconnus, si nous allions ! allons…hurts hurts too much can't can't do it can't oh, Terry, hurts!_

… _allons ! O malheur ! je me sens frémir, la vieille terre…. _A touch, he jumped, almost screamed himself. Bronze hand, scrubbed and ink-stained at the cuticles, resting over his. Stephen. Shoved away and a look that was murder to a friend who was just a friend and didn't know, couldn't hear what had never paused. Concentrating again. A single drip of maple syrup on the edge of the jug, suspended like primordial amber.__

…Sur moi de plus en plus no more no more

_à vous ! la terre fond, Ce n'est rien ! j'y suis ! j'y suis toujours… _The syrup drop fell, catching on the twisted end of a sausage. He was shaking. How long had it been? The table jolted, bench legs scraping the floor. A retching shriek. Jennifer was getting sick. They hadn't eaten anything yet. Sour bile over sage and salt, buttery fresh bread scents still rising where steam had stopped from leprously flaking rolls. Another poem. He knew hundreds by heart.

He could think of none. _Just…just count, Mike, just count. Come on, counting's easy, just hang on. One, two…_

_Do something do something I'm going to die!_

_You're not going to die. Dum vita est spes est. It's just pain. It's like the Cruciatus. Just pain, Mike, just pain, en physio, you can do this, come on, count with me… _Five, no ten trails in the wood. Six clear droplets of salt water convex on the empty plate. Where had they come from? Seven. Eight.

_No more. No hope. No more, why can't I can't I can't I hurts hurts so bad Mummy I want my Mummy Terry oh please make it stop make it stop Neville Ernie somebody stop him stop him going mental make it stop_

Thirteen now, and the reflection, even distorted, was too much like what he wouldn't look at, and he buried his face in his hands, fingernails not digging into wood, but skin where hair wasn't long enough to fist any more, soft-prickly and bristled under his touch. Hands on his back now, stroking tentative along the very edge of his shoulder through the robes. He felt them but didn't and didn't care. _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'd do anything, I would_

_Just make it stop make it stop please please if you're my friend oh please_

_I'm here, I'm still here, listen to my voice, just hang on, we can do this…_

_No no no nononononononono do something do something do something oh God just kill me please just kill me kill me make it stop_

_I can't, I can't, you know I can't_

_Not like this not screaming falling apart going to be mad going mad hurts so can't just need make please please don't want don't let mad please please just end oh please end please end still sane please let me please please friend let me let me make it let me make it stop let me go just let me go_

Eyes open, blurred, blinking it back to find the droplets could not be counted because they'd united into pools that ran into each other, mating in amoebas of the most primitive blocks of life. The scrape of the bench repeated, his now, and he was shaking so hard his belt buckle clattered the table, but his hand was steady. He looked. It was everything he had been afraid of, but it was all right, because the brown eyes were still at least a little sane and they knew and they were grateful and the rictus became the smile of a saint lifted from the pyre into angel's arms.

_I love you. _

Green.


	2. Chapter 2

Fate had a sense of humor, Terry had always believed this, and he had always believed that it was likewise a sense of humor dark enough to comparatively place the paintings of Bosch into the category of light cartooning. Whether he had been placed at last at her cap or shoes was irrelevant, as strumpet fortune had chosen to grant the silently screamed wishes of his despair, and he had indeed taken his friend's place.

He didn't care. Cruel prank or answered prayer, it was justice nonetheless, and whatever lay in store for him now was nothing against the split-second of seeing fair skin flare emerald, seeing brown eyes roll white, Mike's head snap back and limbs draw taut before he sagged limp in the cruciform of his chains and the flash of Snape's wand had turned the world crimson, then black. It was justice, because mercy or madness or malice, _Avada Kedavra _was an Unforgivable, and he had no desire to be forgiven.

It was Terry who was now chained, not in the Great Hall, but in what he recognized easily as the Dark Arts classroom, and it was before Terry now that Belsen limped his slow, predatory parade, and he made no effort to struggle against his bonds or speak through the gag, his eyes peeling the room for some sign of the contraption used so cruelly against Mike, hungering for the stab of the silver tentacles into his shoulder like the longing of a penitent for the scourge. He knew, oh he knew what kind of agony it would bring, but even if it couldn't forgive the unforgivable, it could bury and push aside what he _couldn't_ bear. Full mouth dropping open, fisted hands finally loosed. Unforgivable.

The heartbreak of what he had done was so much more physical, so much more literal than he had expected, and he felt Mike's loss as keenly as a severed limb. His thoughts stretched out the hands of a drowning man, and his pulse thundered wildly in his ears, his body shaking uncontrollably as sick strangled at the back of his throat. He could feel the sweat clinging his shirt to his chest, trickling cold down the dip of his spine at the small of his back, and the absence of his friend was a shrieking emptiness through which a bitter wind howled to freeze and bite, leaving him _needing _more than he ever had since the summer of fifth year, when Mike had born him through the torment of abandoning the –

Oh, Merlin, not that, too.

It made so much more sense now, and the knowledge separated the keening grief from the physical hunger, easing and rarifying it at once. In the furor of that morning, the realization that Mike was missing and what that surely meant, the terror that had brought, the hell that had been waiting in the Great Hall, Terry had forgotten entirely about the Calming Draught that had become a dark morning ritual, and now he was paying the price for that atop everything else. Yet that, too, was justice, he supposed. There should be no chemical solace for an Unforgivable, and if the price was raised by his own addiction, it could never be raised high enough.

Slowly, he realized that Belsen was drawing to a stopping point in a lecture that he hadn't even noticed being given, and what drew his attention was not any of the meaningless words, but the sudden movement as Neville's head shot up in the front row, his own eyes - dark as Mike's but smaller, less extravagantly lashed – narrowed, his chin thrusting out in flinty defiance. "Sir?"

Belsen crossed to the desk where their young Commander sat between Seamus and Parvati, and for the first time, Terry was paying rigid attention, desperate for the connection he had once shared to allow an unspoken warning. Belsen knew. Better than the suspicion of the Carrows, the assessment in that hawk-eyed look was unmistakable, as was the way he angled himself not just to allow an easy line of fire for his own wand to all three of them, but not to block Amycus' vectors. He knew he was approaching a legitimate threat, and the way he had positioned himself suggested that he saw more as easily as if there were chevrons and stars on the shoulders of the red and black robes.

Parvati looked worriedly towards Seamus, who glanced in turn to Neville, and Terry bit his lip beneath the gag, willing as hard as he could for the Commander to meet his eyes, to understand what he was doing with that stupid unspoken order to both of them not to interfere. To hell with chivalry and valor, was the first requirement for Gryffindor to not see the blindingly obvious, to not know that they were broadcasting the DA's chain of command so blatantly. The old wizard's gray head tilted in fascination, and there was victorious epiphany in his eyes as he turned back to the Carrows, his lips parting to share his discovery, and he knew he had to do something.

Terry erupted. Flinging himself forward to the fullest extent allowed by his restraints, he began to thrash and fight, spewing the foulest language he knew around the muffling cloth, allowing all the pain to boil up and over in manic disregard for the chafing slice at wrists and ankles, the shocked expressions of his classmates. It didn't matter if they thought he'd lost his mind, they were right, even if it had happened it didn't matter how long ago in a verdant blast that had torn away everything.

It didn't matter, because it worked. Amycus whirled, his beady eyes wide with shock at first, then he recovered himself, crossing to the struggling Ravenclaw to lash him hard across the face with his wand. Terry's head flew to the side with the stinging blow, throbbing wickedly, but he didn't flinch back, didn't stop his efforts, and it wasn't even any attempt at distraction now. Something had snapped, and his heart was racing so fast it might explode at any minute, his skin tight and aching, his breath coming hard in a way that had nothing to do with the pain that he didn't fear, but anticipated.

So strange. So strange that you could go so far and never even know it until the ground that had once been steady crumbled beneath you and you discovered you were a thousand feet in the air, and the drop was murder. He was the son of intellectuals, raised in a world where everything was measured, everything considered, everything rational, everything decided in cool detachment and only the steady rules of logic mattered, and he knew his own mind was more than equal to theirs, so how had it come to this?

Air. Shelter. Food. Water. All that were supposedly needed for survival, but he'd twisted that, permuted and perverted it until those things were secondary, even wholly irrelevant. He had become exactly what his parents sneered most haughtily at: dependant.

Dependant on Mike, on the simple companionship of having another always sharing his thoughts, the private jokes, the casually polyglottal banter, scarcely needing to complete a sentence, reaching out a hand and having what you sought placed there without asking, never needing to explain, to hold back, to dumb down. Dependant on his _light_, his way of seeing the darkest parts of the world with such clear-eyed optimism. Dependant on his strength, his ability to shake off the little things that clung to Terry like the parasitical growths of daily life, to live in the moment instead of terrorizing himself with the formless, uncontrollable future.

Dependant, even, on his simple physical beauty, the way that you could glance across at the sunlight through the classroom window outlining that perfect profile and know that for once, the universe had gotten something completely right, uniting interior and exterior superlatives into someone that for some mad, impossible reason, had chosen to be his friend. There was no bond of obligation there, no blood or marriage or politic rationale, but Michael Corner had chosen him for a friend, and he was dependant more than he had ever known that being tapped and lifted from the morass validated the accident of his very existence. Dependant on being wanted.

That should have been so much more than enough, but he was weak. Too weak, and even after Mike had already weaned him away from them once, he had gone back to the potions to get through this year, and maybe that humiliating addiction was just symptomatic of what he had never deserved. He had been weak, too weak to hold up, and he had thrown everything away in a moment of surrender guised under mercy. Unforgivable.

Belsen turned away from him now, summoning Neville to the front of the classroom, and Terry redoubled his efforts, rewarded by the feel of the gag beginning to slip on his sweat-soaked skin. He worked his jaws frantically to loosen it further as Amycus swung his wand to the other youth. "You'll be demonstratin' fer our guest," he sneered. "And no holdin' back, neither. Three in one day, them Ravenclaws ain't learnin' so well fer the house supposed ter be so smart."

Neville shook his head, shoving his wand deliberately into his belt before crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "No."

Amycus' doughy face crinkled into a dangerous glower. "Don't go –"

The gag slipped down at last, and Terry twisted towards the Commander, shocked by the growling vehemence of his own voice as he shouted across the stunned and silent class. "Do it, Longbottom! Do it!"

"I said no," Neville repeated firmly, his eyes never leaving the Death Eater's face. Something in the calm refusal was too much, and he felt his features twist in fury, unable to believe he could be denied even this small punishment by someone who claimed so often to care about his soldiers.

"You fucking _coward!" _Terry raged. "I thought you were the son of Aurors! Where's that Gryffindor courage now?! What fucking more do you want to see someone earn it? _I KILLED HIM! _Isn't that _enough _for you?! _DO IT!_"

"No," he said again, and there was an awful sympathy in his look now. "I'm sorry, Terry, I'm not going to – AH!" The words cut off in a harsh cry as Belsen flicked his wand casually, acting even as Carrow was aiming his for the Cruciatus they all knew would be the cost of such refusal. Neville went abruptly rigid, clawing at his face in shocked agony as the skin rippled and pulled, distorting the pleasant visage even through the twisting of pain. For a moment, it looked as though his face was trying to rip itself apart, and then that was exactly what happened.

There was a sick, wet tearing sound, and blood spurted through the clutching fingers, scattering Terry's face like scornful spittle, and Neville had dropped to his knees, fighting clearly not to scream, not to be sick as his broad shoulders trembled violently. Seamus had jumped to his feet, several others looked poised to act as well, but Amycus leveled his wand across the class, holding them at bay. "Leave 'im!"

"I'm…I'm fine." The words were a shaking lie, already blurred by the swelling that had begun to surround the gruesome injury, but Neville was on his feet again, facing Belsen with his head high, even as the scarlet lining of his hood was deepened and glistened by the blood pouring down his neck. "Will that…be all…sir?"

Their visitor looked at once a bit bemused and fascinated at his victim's stubbornness, and he nodded his head rather graciously, motioning Neville back to his seat, where Parvati immediately seized at him, pressing a wad of cloth she had ripped from the sleeve of her own robes against the bleeding gash, her dark eyes blazing a challenge that dared anyone to try and stop her doing what she could for her leader and friend.

Terry was much more worried about Seamus, whose face had turned an alarming red, his fist clenched so tightly on the carved handle of his wand that he suspected the patterns of the knotwork would be found on his palm for weeks, the hexes taut on his lips. He caught the Lieutenant's blue eyes fiercely, shaking his head. "Don't you dare, Finnigan! I'm not worth it!"

Belsen laughed, a crisp little bark of sound. "Maybe Herr Boot, he ees not so stupid, ja? But you haff many troublemakers here, Herr Carrow."

The flush deepened on Carrow's cheeks, and he jabbed the wand towards where the Slytherins were sitting, the restriction on mixed classes having been lifted for their 'special' instructor's convenience. "Zabini!"

Blaise Zabini stood at once, bowing in slightly over-emphasized respect, exotic hazel-green eyes gleaming eagerly from his coffee-and-cream complexion. "Do you want me to do it, Professor?"

Carrow's accession was a single, terse grunt. "And do it right!"

"_Certainly_, Professor." Terry drew himself up as straight as possible as Zabini approached, flashing a grin at him that spoke of every bit of the pain Neville had been unwilling to bestow. Yes, he had seen Zabini do it before, this would do. Not as good as one of the Carrows or Snape, perhaps, but certainly better than Crabbe or Goyle, and he had more creativity in how he used it, even if he wasn't as purely brutal as Nott, nor did it carry the strangely desperate power Malfoy displayed. Not enough, certainly not enough for what he had done, but enough for now. Maybe. Almost.

Zabini paced twice back and forth in front of him, considering angles carefully, his eyes dissecting Terry's body for pre-existent wounds or points of vulnerability, then they came to the tattoo that banded his right arm, and he paused, the look that flickered an instant over his face completely unreadable. Something closed in his eyes, rendering them a perfect mask through which his true intent could not possibly be determined, but his voice was silk as he leaned in so close that his breath was warm and damp on Terry's ear.

"You didn't kill him, you know. _Crucio!" _


	3. Chapter 3

He had heard their voices, Tony and Stephen, felt their hands from indeterminate distance blurred in aching, bone-deep pain, sharpened at the corners of a bitten tongue, a cracked rib, too many bruises. They'd said he was heavy, worried about spinal alignment, tucked him into the bed, but then the black had lifted to blue canopy and worried faces and none of it mattered past Zabini's statement that had come on the blistering threshold of torture, the four simple words torture themselves.

You didn't kill him.

And it was true. He'd forced himself up and the protests were nothing, because across a few feet and a hundred miles he was there, and he was breathing. Alive. Mike. In his own bed, already showing signs of care where the blood had been wiped from his shoulder, the sheets snugged around his still, still body, a few things laid out on the bedside table where hands that couldn't possibly love and regret as much as his had tended him.

He had wept, cried harder than he had ever known a man could sob and not choke on it, but it was too much even for such raw outpouring that had driven the others silently, awkwardly back from the _Protego _he didn't even remember erecting with the wand he hadn't even realized had been returned to him. It was too much for any sounds, any words, and all he could do was look down on what he had done, the manifest reality of his sins laid out before him on smooth sapphire blue cotton.

Mike was breathing, his lips scantly parted, his chest rising and falling ever so barely, but the curse had come so close to its purpose, and there was an ominous fragility to it that went beyond Tony's well-intentioned warning. Madame Pomfrey, he had said, could do nothing. No one had ever seen a Killing Curse come so close to success without tipping its victim over the edge, and all that could be done now was to wait. Wait and see, and the real fangs of the dragon were in what hadn't been said. Because they weren't waiting to see if Mike lived, they were waiting to see if anything was left beyond breath, or if Terry had left nothing but a shell, white and gray and blue on blue, empty as the silence that met his reaching thoughts, cold as the hand that he laced now with his own.

There was nothing there, nothing at all, but he pressed forward nonetheless, his own pain not even worth feeling as his mind stretched beyond, casting into the space they had once shared. _I'm here, Mike. I'm here. Can you hear me? I'm here…._

Eyes closed, back curling forward into a fetal ball of grief, forehead pressed to icy knuckles, and he just let it go, let it all pour out, knowing he was making no sense and not caring, knowing he was unheard and refusing to believe, because to believe was to accept, and to accept was impossible, not while a pulse beat however thinly in the heart he hadn't quite stilled. His eyes ached with tears, his own breath was in gulps, and though any intruder would have heard nothing but the soft sobs, the truth of them bled into the etherworld that had been theirs and now was Terry's alone.

_Hurts so much to see you like this. You look…oh, Merlin, but I tried to…and you almost were. But you're still beautiful. How can you still be beautiful when you look like a corpse? It's not right. None of this is right, and it's all, all of it, oh, all of it mia culpa. _

_I've wondered for years what kind of person could burn the Library of Alexandria; all that knowledge, all that art, so much priceless genius, who could look at that and bear to think of a torch or a hammer…but those monsters are still with us, aren't they, Mike? That he could look at you and do…do what he did, knowing you're not just beautiful, but brilliant and brave and good…and how could I help him? What does that make me? Qu'est-ce que creature, quel monstre suis-je?_

_I don't want to know. For the first time in my life, there's something I don't want to know. Did I destroy you? That's what they didn't want to tell me, that you're still breathing, but if I've burned away everything that makes you who you are, I don't think I could live with myself. The Cruciatus, it's not nearly enough. I don't think anything ever could be. _

_Can you hear me, Mike? Are you still in there? Squeeze my hand, something. Anything. Just let me know you're still there. Please. _

_Or maybe this is just a chance to say goodbye, is that it? A chance to really think about what I threw away because I was scared, because I was weak, because I didn't want to hear you keep screaming and hurting and it was like I was up there with you, but I should have been. I knew what you were going to do, but I was a coward. Always a coward. I told myself you wouldn't, but I knew you would, because you'd never leave Elliot to suffer up there alone. Because you're a better person than me, you always have been. _

_You've never needed to hide behind potions or anything – or anyone else – so that no one can see what's there. I didn't even let myself know until now, I guess. Did you? You couldn't have. You'd never have stayed my friend if you knew I was the kind of person who could do that to someone he'd called a brother. _

_I never had a brother before you. Never even really knew what that meant, but you're more than that, Mike. I look at you, and I see everything that should be, everything that I'm not, but you make me feel like it doesn't matter, like when I'm with you I am that better person, and now that I've destroyed that, all I'm left with is the pieces that didn't die with you, and those are the pieces that didn't belong to you because I never wanted you to have them, all the parts of me that I never realized were so much of me that were never worth you. _

_I want…oh, Merlin, I want you back, and that should be everything, that should be the only thing, and it would be if I were worth having you back, but I'm so weak, so fucking weak, and it's calling me, I want it so bad, and you're the only one who was ever able to hold me back when I needed it like this. But I've never needed it like this. Can't. Won't. Won't do it. I deserve this. Did you have any idea? Is that why you didn't stop me this time, because you knew why I really needed it? _

_I thought it was the fear, I really did. I thought it was because if I let myself feel the fear, I'd never be able to stay with the DA, stay with you since you'd never abandon them. It wasn't fear. It was this…this…I know it's anger, but it's still fear, too, because it's scaring the hell out of me to actually feel it. I've never…never…._

_I screamed at Neville. Called him a coward, if you'll believe it. Him! Almost the bravest man I've ever known except for you, and I called him a fucking coward because he wouldn't do to me half of what I did to you, and that doesn't make him a coward, it just means he's the better person. He can fucking control himself without being spelled out on some stupid draught. _

_How could you ever look in here and still love me? I hate. I hate and I'm angry and it's not just Belsen or Snape or the Carrows, it's the whole world that could let this happen, all of it; Neville and Ernie and Elliot and you, oh, what they did to _you_! Even my parents. I don't understand it, Mike. They've loved me, even though they didn't want me. They've never hurt me, never been unkind to me. Why do I wish they could know what I've become when I know – when that's why I want it – that it would hurt them and make them so ashamed? It's not their fault that I've thrown away the only thing that got me through each day, and I don't mean the potion at all, I mean you. _

_Are you in there? Are you hearing any of this? Maybe, maybe I hope you're not. I don't even know if I want you to. I don't even know why I'm telling you any of it. It's just…I did kill myself. I tore my heart open to try and do something that I didn't even get right and was never right and now I don't think I can stop the bleeding and maybe I'll bleed to death or maybe I already have and how can this feel like I'm dying and living for maybe the first time and I don't even care if you hate me forever if you'll just be okay. _

_Just…just be okay, please. You're stronger than this. You're stronger than me. Don't go, please. I wish there was anything I could – but you can't take back the past. I wish. Wishes horses beggars, I know. I know. Unforgivable. Can't be blocked, can't be undone. It's a miracle you're alive at all, and how can it be so beautiful and awful to fail so utterly that you're left with just enough hope to despair over and nothing beyond that. _

_I've never needed anything beyond that; not hope, I mean…you. I've never needed anything beyond you. I've always been taught that it's wrong to need, wrong to hang that on another person, and I didn't mean to. If I'm being punished for that now…but what do you do when there are no more books? When the knowledge fails and the authority is corrupt and you have to turn somewhere and I turned to you but where do I turn now? Not Neville. Merlin's wand, he's even younger than we are and he's doing an amazing job but he's already so far over his head. Not Professor Flitwick. There's no charm for this. _

_I don't believe in God. Or is that the problem? Is that…is this some kind of test? If you're out there, make him open his eyes right now, make him sit up and make him all right and make this all a dream or just take him now, make it over and let it end and take him to join the other angels. He never really belonged in this filthy excuse for a world you've left us, anyway. Or take me and let him live. Take me. I'm here if you are! _

_Look at me. Resorting to superstition. The low points just keep getting lower, I guess. Is there a bottom to it all? Haven't I already broken against it? Why am I still breathing, why haven't I torn myself to pieces yet? I've heard of it, wizards erupting into flames or blowing apart because their own magic destroys them. Anecdotal, mostly, but there's some solid evidence here and there, enough certainly to warrant further investigation, though unfortunately there's practically no priority for funding those kinds of delving into what are really just magical urban legends. _

_Is there something I'm still supposed to do, something where I've still somehow yet to fail? Are you in there at all? What would happen if…but what's the worst that could? But I know that already, don't I? It wasn't killing you, either, it was this. Not knowing. We've always hated not knowing. _

…_hurtshurts oh please not again thought it was over thought no more why Terry? Terry? Is that you I thought you let me go so cold so cold hurts so bad…_

It was thin, faint, moaning like the distant wind almost too little to hear in the very depths of the blackness, but Terry heard himself cry out as he leapt for it, seized it in formless hands and clutched it, dragged it up to real consciousness. Louder and louder the aimless babble, the litany of suffering, but what did the words matter when it was MIKE and he was THERE and…

His eyes snapped open as they breached the surface together, and at once the breath was driven out of him again as he saw what he had done in his eagerness. Mike's eyes were open, true, but there was nothing there but pain, torn and jagged, unready and unhealed and forced too soon. Sweat had broken out in a chill gloss across his pale skin, his muscles tensing, fresh blood appearing at the pierced triangle on his shoulder as he writhed weakly, and Terry froze in horror, impaled on the implications of his own last impulse for mercy.

"I'm sorry!" He could taste his own blood on his lacerated tongue, feel it well hot again to fill his mouth and drip past his lips onto his chin, but he could have bitten it wholly off for all that it mattered. It was what he'd hoped for, begged for, even _prayed _for, but not like this. Not more pain, no, not even to know he was still there.

He couldn't do it, and he didn't care if it damned him again as he fumbled his wand from his belt with hands that had gone utterly numb, as he pressed the willow to Mike's throat and oh, please, if there was any justice anywhere ever at all, the Stunner would do no worse than push him back into the painless oblivion.

A flare of red echoing and atoning the flare of green, and Mike was gone again. Terry sat there for what could have been seconds or years, feeling the blood drip down his face, feeling his heart race and the itching, crawling, needing desperation of withdrawal that refused to give him a moment's peace as long as he left it ignored. But he didn't want peace. What he wanted…but no, not like that.

He took a long, deep breath, forcing his hands to stop shaking enough to push the wand back into his belt, to find the cold fingers again with his own and bow over them in new supplication. _Never meant it to be like that! Never wanted to see you hurt more! I shouldn't…I shouldn't have…how could I…._

_Selfish! Selfish and wrong and what is evil if not to force your own will on the pain of others! Oh, Merlin, what am I, how can I be, what's wrong with me? But you're still there! I didn't mean to, I never wanted to, I'd even have borne not knowing still if I'd known it would cause you more pain, but that doesn't change that you're _in there! _At least a little. And if you're in there, maybe you can heal, and maybe we can get through this. _

_We. Such a beautiful, tiny little word. So simple. We. Amicitia. Freres. Philia. You're so strong, so much stronger than me. I don't want you to hurt, but edacis, egoiste, egoistic, selfish, selfish, I want you to fight. Fight now and fight again and survive and we'll make it, because if you make it I know I can; you _are_ my better angels. _

_We'll fight and we'll survive and all of this, every minute of it and every day of my life I've lived and every day I have left will be worth it if I can just have one more day with you well and whole and seeing you smile, seeing your eyes light up with a new idea, some new bit of knowledge, some new discovery that we can share. Remember the tour you wanted? I take back everything I ever said. To hell with an itinerary, let's just go. Rome, Athens, Alexandria, Baghdad, Beijing, Delhi, Timbuktu, Machu Picchu, everywhere, anywhere. It won't matter, because I'm not scared of missing a portkey or getting my pockets picked or having to come up with an emergency antidote to the local water, not any more. Not after this._

_I don't know who I am, Mike, but if you're there, as long as you're there, I think I might want to know after all. But that's if you forgive me, and I'm ahead of myself there, aren't I, because how can I expect forgiveness for an Unforgivable? How can I expect you to share the tomorrows I tried to steal from you? _

_No, I've lost you, I have to accept that, but at least I didn't take you from the rest of the world. I didn't burn the library. That, if nothing else, I can still say for myself. Maybe, in the end, that's why I'm here…so that at least once, someone would truly know how precious you are, even if you're in the end a treasure only measurable by its cost to lose. Even the diamond must have glass to cut._

_Je ne suis que le verre. _

THE END

Author's Note: The poem quoted in the first part of this is "Qu'est-ce pour nous mon Coeur" by Arthur Rimbaud.


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